This Tool takes care of it all for you. Download the exe, put it on your servers, run it to configure the Loopback Check feature simple and easy.

Its simple.
Its small (21kb zipped)
Only click and make it happen
No installation, one single exe that works on most Windows Servers (and clients)
Disable the Loopback check completely (Not recommended)
Enable or Disable the Loopback Check function
Enable it and add excluded URLs (Recommended, now easy to do)

In this guide I will help you find a way to install Windows Server 2012 R2 quick and easy, from a simple USB flash drive. It’s really easy, but you still need to Think about a few things.
I’ll list them here and if you want, you can follow the step by step guide below.

Quicksteps:

1. Get a USB Flash drive formatted with FAT32, it has to be AT LEAST 8GB! (The Windows Server 2012R2 installation bits will not fit on a 4GB USB drive…)2. Download and install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool from Microsoft Store here or Codeplex here (It is an official Microsoft tool, totally wierdly named from the Windows 7 release but still very much valid!)
3. Download or locate a ‘Windows Server 2012 R2′ .iso file and store it locally on your harddrive.
4. Start the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool (from startbutton or ‘windows 8/Metro’ style startmenu’?)
5. Complete the steps 1-4
6. Insert the USB flash drive into the powered off PC to install, Power on and boot from USB drive (F9 at HP logo on HP Machines).
7. Install Windows Server as you would normally.
8. Done!

This guide in its entirety works just as well if you replace the Windows Server 2012 R2 .iso file with Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012 or plain Windows 8 (Windows Server 2008 R2 not verified but willmost likely also work)

Step by step:

1. USB Flash Drive

Prepare a USB flash drive for installation, is has to be at least 8 GB in size and it has to be formatted with FAT32. It does not have to be erased, the tool will do that for you if needed.

Before

2. Download and install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool from Microsoft Store or Codeplex. The Links are as follows:

Run the .exe file, you will have to be a local administrator on your machine for it to install properly.

Click Next

Click Install

Click Finish

3. Locate a Windows Server 2012 R2 .iso file. This file should be placed on a local harddrive. It does not matter where you put it, as long as it is on a local HD and it is accessable to you when running the tool, meaning that you have access to where the file is stored in the filesystem.

4. After the installation of the tool has completed, you will suddenly notice this tile:

You can also just use the search function, in ‘metro mode’ simply type Windows 7 and you will see it and its uninstall app.
Start the tool
Click Ok at the User Account Control popup dialog
The first screen should now look like this:

In my test, I’m using an .iso file downloaded from TechNet Subscriber downloads (soon to be no more)
It does not have to be from TechNet, it can be MSDN or Volume Licensing or really any form of Windows Server 2012 R2 installation iso.

Click ‘Next’

Click on ‘USB device’
If you see the window below, that means that the USB drive is either not plugged in properly, or it has the wrong formatting or insufficient storage or similar. Make sure that you have a USB flash drive that meets: 4GB minimum+FAT32.

Insert a USB drive that meets the requirements and press the refresh button
Now, click on the ‘Begin copying’ button.

If the USB drive was ok, the copying will begin, but if not, if it still had files still on it, you will see this dialog:

Click Erase to continue

Click Yes and the formatting and copying process will begin.

Let it do its thing until it reaches 100%

When it has finished formatting and copying files, you are done.

After!

6. Next step, is to insert the USB drive into the PC you want to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on, Power it off completely and Power on again.
Use BIOS settings to select ‘boot from USB’ or like on a HP machine, hit F9 at the HP logo screen to boot directly from USB.

7. Let the Installation begin! The Windows installation is pretty much standard. A Clean install is described here. The setup of Windows 8, which is pretty much the same, is described here

This time I’ll help you find a way to install Windows 8.1 quick and easy, from a simple USB flash drive. It’s a piece of cake really, but a few things you need to know about.
I’ll list them here and if you want, you can follow the step by step guide below.

Quicksteps:

1. Get a USB Flash drive formatted with FAT32, it has to be AT LEAST 4GB!2. Download and install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool from Microsoft Store HERE or Codeplex HERE (It is an official Microsoft tool, totally wierdly named from the Windows 7 release but still very much valid!)
3. Download or locate a ‘Windows 8.1′ .iso file and store it locally on your harddrive.
4. Start the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool (from startbutton or ‘windows 8 style startmenu’?)
5. Complete the steps 1-4
6. Insert the USB flash drive into the powered off PC to install, Power on and boot from USB drive (F9 at HP logo on HP Machines).
7. Install Windows as you would normally.
8. Done!

This guide in its entirety works just as well if you replace the Windows 8.1 .iso file with Windows 7, Windows Server 2012 or plain Windows 8 (Windows Server 2008 R2 not verified but willmost likely also work)

Step by step:

1. USB Flash Drive

Prepare a USB flash drive for installation, is has to be at least 4 GB in size and it has to be formatted with FAT32. It does not have to be erased, the tool will do that for you if needed.

Before

2. Download and install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool from Microsoft Store or Codeplex. The Links are as follows:

Run the .exe file, you will have to be a local administrator on your machine for it to install properly.

Click Next

Click Install

Click Finish

3. Locate a Windows 8.1 .iso file. This file should be placed on a local harddrive. It does not matter where you put it, as long as it is on a local HD and it is accessable to you when running the tool, meaning that you have access to where the file is stored in the filesystem.

4. After the installation of the tool has completed, you will suddenly notice this tile:

You can also just use the search function, in ‘metro mode’ simply type Windows 7 and you will see it and its uninstall app.
Start the tool
Click Ok at the User Account Control popup dialog
The first screen should now look like this:

In my test, I’m using an .iso file downloaded from TechNet Subscriber downloads (soon to be no more)
It does not have to be from TechNet, it can be MSDN or Volume Licensing or really any form of Windows 8.1 installation iso.

Click ‘Next’

Click on ‘USB device’
If you see the window below, that means that the USB drive is either not plugged in properly, or it has the wrong formatting or insufficient storage or similar. Make sure that you have a USB flash drive that meets: 4GB minimum+FAT32.

Insert a USB drive that meets the requirements and press the refresh button
Now, click on the ‘Begin copying’ button.

If the USB drive was ok, the copying will begin, but if not, if it still had files still on it, you will see this dialog:

Click Erase to continue

Click Yes and the formatting and copying process will begin.

Let it do its thing until it reaches 100%

When it has finished formatting and copying files, you are done.

After!

6. Next step, is to insert the USB drive into the PC you want to install Windows 8.1 on, Power it off completely and Power on again.
Use BIOS settings to select ‘boot from USB’ or like on a HP machine, hit F9 at tghe HP logo screen to boot directly from USB.

7. Let the Installation begin! The Windows installation is pretty much standard. A Clean install is described here. The setup of Windows 8, which is the same, is described here

8. Done!

References:

Thanks to:

As Always, Mattias Gutke! At CAG for some strange reason….Always a friend, a great help and a second opinion!

Move your SharePoint IIS sites from the systemdrive(C:)or avoid putting them there in the first Place.

Do you see the lion that is totally in the wrong Place…or is it the Jeeps that are…?

Deal fellow SharePointlovers!

This time, I’ll try to show you how to avoid the messed up situation most SharePoint installations are in, with everything on the systemdrive, or C:
Now, us people have over time been better and better at one thing, we understand that the logfiles should not be located on the systemdrive, so we have learned over time to move the ULS log and the Usage and Health log from C:, some have even been clever enough to move even the IIS log from C:

But, what do we still always, always, always, find installed on C:?… … …yes, C:\inetpub!

It not very strange though, the developers of Windows Server have made a point out of not giving us an option to install inetpub on a different path, not unless you do an unattended installation or otherwise script or Control your installation. The ‘Add/Remove roles’ wizards in Server 2008, 2008R2 and 2012 all lack this option (for a reason).

BUT! This is intentially, the default inetpub location should and must be in the systemdrive, IIS is considered an operating system Component and has to be there for a number of reasons. At the end you will find a link to a KB article that explains this in more detail. Leave inetpub and its subfolders where it is!

So, why would we want to do this anywaywhy move the inetpub and all of its content, or at least the separate site catalogs to a different drive?
– Separation (Performance and Security)
– Compartmentalization (Performance and Security)
Having averything on the same drive is bad for a few reasons, primarily performance and security. Perfomance since the OS is on the C drive and security because if an attacker by some means gets access to a different less secure applications sitecatalog, they also get access to the systemdrive and possible also all other webapplication sitecatalogs. Moving them to other drives, same or different, helps mitigate both possible issues.
I therefore recommend doing this:

Do your regular installation, add the Web Server role and let the inetpub folder end up on C:, like I said, no worries. Whats important for us will not be located there anyway.
Next, edit the registry to make the default location of inetpub be for example D: (unless this is were you will be putting all of your logfiles, then select a third or fourth drive)
Install the SharePoint as you would normally do, Central administration will now end up were you pointed the default location.
Create your Web Applications using the GUI or PowerShell and leave out the path, the IIS sites will be were you wanted them.

So, how do we do this in more detail? A Guide…

Configure the Web Server(s)

1. Configure the default location

On all of your web servers in the farm, and on your Central Administration server(s), edit the registry key that Controls the default location:

Start regedit by, Right clicking in the very lower left corner and you will get a list of actions, click on Run.

Type Regedit and click Ok.

Click Yes in the UAC dialog.

In Registry Editor, we locate the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\InetStp

Under ‘InetStp’ we have a number of keys.

Locate and Edit the key PathWWWRoot from the default: (%systemdrive%)

to: (D: or where you prefer to locate it, E: F: G: H:…)

There you go! All set, no IIS reset or restarts of any kind required.
Like said before, go on and do this on all servers that will host a webserver(WFE or CA). If you don’t, then you will have an inconsistent setup making Everything very hard to setup and t-shoot.

2. Add SharePoint
After this has been changed on all of you r web servers, you can go ahead and install the SharePoint binaries and configure your farm, The Central Administration site will now be located on the drive you have specified, it will be in the exact same path as it normally would but on a different drive. For example: ‘D:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\20000\’

Note that the Central Administration UI will now be default suggest a different path:

If you create a new site using PowerShell, it will also by default put it in D: even if you don’t specify any path:

For the logfiles, I’ll make a separate post, they should also be moved, more so even than the sitefolders. Logfiles will fill up the disks, they will slow performance and maybe most importantly, they contain delicate information that you want to keep separated from the OS and IIS.

Note: Ideally, you should separate and prioritize data among disks. Place your data files and your SQL Server transaction logs on separate physical hard disks. RAID 5 should provide a good compromise between reliability, and throughput.

Note: Ideally, you should separate and prioritize data among disks. Place your data files and your SQL Server transaction logs on separate physical hard disks. RAID 5 should provide a good compromise between reliability, and throughput.

I know I will use this to make my life easier until I get it all memorized…I hope that it may help you as well. Any feedback or recommended additions to the tables will be appreciated.Back to table of contents

You all know about the passphrase in SharePoint (2010 and later) right? You name it during farm Creation using Powershell or the Config Wizard. It must be a complicated string of characters and it has to hold a certain length (exact requirements stated below)

Do we really need it?

Since you can replace the passphrase (Change your PassPhrase using PowerShell) without having the old one, all you need is to be a member of the farm administrators SharePoint Group. So…the use of the PassPhrase is what? You don’t need to save it since all you have to do when it is required (join farm) is to change it…and if you have the passphrase, you still have to enter the farm account (Database Access Account) username and password, so you still need the permissions…

The Passphrase in SharePoint 2013 Preview is described as:
(From the ‘Deployment guide for Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Preview’)
Although a passphrase resembles a password, it is usually longer to improve security. It is used to encrypt credentials of accounts that are registered in SharePoint 2013 Preview. For example, the SharePoint 2013 Preview system account that you provide when you run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. Ensure that you remember the passphrase, because you must use it every time that you add a server to the farm.

Ensure that the passphrase meets the following criteria:

Contains at least eight characters

Contains at least three of the following four character groups:

English uppercase characters (from A through Z)

English lowercase characters (from a through z)

Numerals (from 0 through 9)

Nonalphabetic characters (such as !, $, #, %)

So…now that you have read all this, do we really need it? Why bother? Is it one more layer of real security or more more layer of persieved security?

-It’s easily replaced/reset (see Change your PassPhrase using PowerShell)
-You still need the farmaccount credentials to join
-It’s seldom used and thus easily lost (in real life! yes)
-For the encryption purposes, SharePoint could use a random key that you never have to see or know about…
_________________________________________________________

Changing the Farm’s PassPhrase, is it difficult and something that canb possible screw Everything up? Or is it an easy and pretty trival task?

I’d say the latter, changing it is easy, what is important and hard, is to make sure that dokumentation and possibly secure stores and such are updated to reflect the change. Remember, as long as you have at least one SharePoint server still connected/joined to the farm, you can Always reset the PassPhrase again. It’s when you have a single Config Database without a single server that you really really want to have the PassPhrase documented and in order.

So, how to do it practically? There is really only one way, and that is using PowerShell:

Open a PowerShell Prompt as Administrator.
Load the SharePoint Module:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Enter this at the PowerShell prompt:

$passphrase = ConvertTo-SecureString -asPlainText -Force

Input the new passphrase and hit Enter

Enter this at the PowerShell prompt:

Set-SPPassPhrase -PassPhrase $passphrase -Confirm

You will be asked to confirm the passphrase by re-entering it in cleartext
Re-enter the passphrase and hit Enter
You will be asked if you are sure that you want to perform this action, type Y (for Yes) and hit Enter

Your farm passphrase has now been reset!

Next time, use the new PassPhrase when joining the farm.

!! And remember to update any documentation !!

Why I had to do this now? Well, this is, I’m currently helping a customer setting up Resporting Services for SharePoint, that requires an extra server joined to the farm with SSRS and SP installed on them. I installed the server and added all the SP’s and LP’s and CU’s and soon, until we were good to go to join it into the farm. Now, I got prompted for the PassPhrase…hmm. This farm was setup some time ago by a different firm and they are not around anymore…My customer sent me the documentation on the farm setup but no luck. The PassPhrase was forgotten and gone…So, instead of panicking and screaming for a complete reinstall, I started to look for the way to retrieve it or reset it. Turns out, you can reset it but never retrieve it. You must have one server still in the farm to be able to reset it, this server is wehere you run the Powershell commands from.

So, now my PassPhrase is reset, I quickly added it to textfile on the server and also emailed it to my customer. Later, I will also add it to the Farm documentation for future reference.